Scarcely had they returned, hopeful, and Colonel Ebenezer Zane was about to lead out a larger force, when they all heard a cheer. They looked. Hurrah! Another company of men, ahorse, were galloping across the bottom, for the top of the bluff, and the fort gates.
"It's Major McColloch! It's Sam McColloch, from Short Creek! Huzza! Huzza!"
Short Creek was a dozen miles north. The McCollochs lived there. Here they came--the Short Creek settlers, business bent.
And on a sudden, as the battered double gates of the fort swung, the Indians sprang from the very ground, and charged to cut off the galloping company. 'Twas a race for life or death. Shooting right and left, the Short Creek riders tore on. They were winning, they were winning. Major Sam McColloch veered aside, to let his men pass. He was resolved that not one should fail. It was a generous act--the act of a real captain. But he lingered too long. The Indians were upon him--they out-stripped him, as he turned late, and before his horse had caught its stride they were between him and the gates.
He wheeled around, and bending low to avoid the bullets he sped at a tangent in the opposite direction, for the timber of Wheeling Hill. The Indians afoot could not catch him, no bullet caught him; he would make it--he would make it; there he goes, up the hill. He was safe--but was he?
He had planned to reach another fort: Van Metre's Fort, a block-house beyond the hill. And he himself thought that he was safe, until, galloping more easily along the brow of the hill, he ran squarely into another band of Indians, trooping to the siege of Fort Henry. The Indians recognized him. They all knew Sam McColloch and his white horse; they asked no better prize.
"Sam! Now we got you, Sam!" They spread, to take him alive.
Again he wheeled. There were foes in front of him, foes closing in hot behind him, and a dusky line extending on his right. On his left the hill ended in a precipice. He chose the precipice, and with his moccasined heels hammered his horse straight for it.
Yelling gleefully, the Indians ran after. Now they had Sam.
Just as the foremost arrived at the spot where Major Sam should be at bay, they heard a crashing of brush and branches, a grinding of rock and gravel. They peered over. It was three hundred feet to the creek below--and plunging, scrambling, now on its haunches, now on its nose, the white horse was bounding, leaping, sprawling, already half way down, with the major firmly astride, reins in one hand, rifle in the other.